


PDA

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fingerfucking, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Public Display of Affection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:36:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy and Coulson start touching. A lot. But it doesn't seem like so out of the ordinary.





	1. recovery

Maybe it has to do with having been literally lost in space and almost losing each other and Coulson almost having to watch how Daisy sacrificed herself so the Kree would not destroy the whole world and her being the last person he thought he was ever going to touch and viceversa - but no, the explanations are irrelevant. It just keeps happening.

It happens from the beginning, since the moment they come back. Daisy on recovery, having to spend a lot of down time in her bunk, Coulson trying to keep her entertained, spending a lot of hours down there as well. The Playground being reconstructed around them, the smell of fresh paint, the noise of the work itself. Coulson brings her food, and more importantly he brings her work she can do from her bed, because he knows Daisy, and she is the kind of person that goes insane if she doesn’t have anything to do, if she can’t help. It reminds him of his last days in Tahiti (though that memory is just a fake) and how he itched to get out of there and back to work. He feels a pang of solidarity as he sits by her bed and he watches her eating the crepes he made for her for breakfast and she talks excitedly about the new firewalls she’s just installed in the mainframe - again, she did that from her laptop like recovering in bed. Coulson is impressed.  


The thing - the “thing” - doesn’t start there, while she is holed up under doctor’s strict orders and Coulson brings her food and entertainment and some times she falls asleep while talking to him (no offense taken, he knows it’s the painkillers working) and he was to throw a blanket over her and turn off the light in her bunk before he leaves.

After her down time comes actual recovery, her leg still in bad shape, hours and hours in the gym, too many hours, because Daisy always goes overboard with everything. Coulson is there when he can. trying to make sure she doesn’t push herself too hard. He’s there helping her with the exercises, holding her up so she won’t fall, and giving her a hand when she does fall and needs to get back up.  


When she’s finished with the day’s rehabilitation she’s so sore Coulson massages the back of her shoulders, overworked from carrying most of her weight as she worked the bar, pressing his thumbs into the hollow between the shoulder-blades, applying gentler pressure on top of her arms. Then he attends to her injured leg, massages to soothe the pain, his fingers patiently working the back of her thigh and her buttocks.

“You don’t have to do this,” Daisy says. 

“You want me to stop?” he asks. He thinks he knows her well enough to be able to tell, that she’s not uncomfortable with this, just that she doesn’t want to be a burden. 

“No,” she says, the words almost slipping out. “I mean, it’s nice. But you don’t have to do it.”

“I’m happy to,” he says, gently. He is. Suddenly an old memory. “I used to do this for my mom. The last years of her illness, when I stayed home to take care of her, she found it hard to walk.”

“Was that when you learn to do this?” Daisy asks, her eyes fixed on Coulson while he is on his knees, rubbing circles into the swollen flesh of her hip.

He nods without looking up, surprised at himself for having told her the story. Those two days back home, it’s not something he talks about, not even back then, not even returning to SHIELD after his mother died. He’s a bit curious as to why he’s divulging the information now, to Daisy. But maybe it’s fitting that it’s to Daisy, and he doesn’t find the sudden memory - the echo of another occasion where he was trying to comfort someone he loved with his hands - so unwelcome after a while.

Daisy doesn’t say anything else to that, but she lets him keep massaging her muscles, and from time to time she rewards him with exhalations of relief, vocally letting him know what he’s doing is helping.

It becomes natural thing between them. Coulson either helps with her daily training or is there afterwards to manage her pain. He actually enjoys doing it - well, he doesn’t, he’d rather Daisy hadn’t gotten hurt trying to save the world again and her leg didn’t cause her such trouble, but since things are what they are he likes feeling useful, he can get lost in those movements, his thumbs hooked behind her knees, digging into the hurting places until they hurt a little less. His prosthetic has improved the quality of his massages, he has to admit, and he doesn’t tire so easily thanks to it. It’s weird to be grateful for that - it’s not because of the thing’s gadgets, the weapons it might incorporate, it’s something as simple as that it allows him to work on Daisy’s soreness a few minutes more every time.

People come and go, they share the gym with Daisy and Coulson and see them likes this, Daisy’s shoulder in Coulson’s hands, her eyes closed as Coulson maneuvers her arm into a relaxed position. Rookie agents come and go. And Mack, Mack is there a lot, perhaps also wanting to lend Daisy his silent company. It doesn’t bother them, to be seen by everybody like this, to have them known that Coulson touches her likes this, takes cares of her body like this, the late hours they keep, the massages, the easy silence between them.


	2. in the kitchen

The touching doesn’t stop once she is recovered. She’s not sure if their new dynamic in the gym is what makes it possible for her to be a little more open in that sense. She doesn’t think about it, really. It just happens. It just feels good.

Coulson is cooking.

He doesn’t often have the chance - who knew the universe wouldn’t allow them a break not even after having been in a computer generated hellscape and travelling in time and space? - and Daisy knows he enjoy it. Even if it’s a simple thing like today. It’s an unusually quiet weekend and for bizarre bureaucratic reasons it’s two days of only essential personnel in the Playground. Coulson offered to make generous quantities of pasta for the team and for whoever was left in the base. He looks like a ship’s cook, it actually reminds Daisy of the cooks they had at St Agnes, big, foul-mouthed women who were often kinder to the kids than the nuns themselves, she remembers they used to pass forbidden items like candy or chocolate to the kids, or give food to those the nuns had punished without dinner. That’s what Coulson reminds her of right now, with his apron around the waist, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. He’s only missing the hairnet.   
Daisy offers to help. It’s not really a one-man job. She can do the heavy lifting for him, like… chopping stuff. So he can concentrate on the sauce, he likes that part.

Of course she notices she touches him while they cool, elbow to elbow (elbow-checking and hip-checking is the majority of it, actually) but in a way she _doesn’t notice_ , because it doesn’t feel noteworthy at all. It’s liberating actually - she’s always been wary of physical intimacy, even with close friends. She has her reasons. But Coulson is Coulson. It feels good to let herself just be free around him, touch him if she feels like it, let him touch her. All those hours in the gym, with Coulson being really sweet and giving her massages when she was still injured, kind of set new limits.

“Mmm, that smells good,” Daisy says, leaving the chopping for a moment and walking to the other end of the kitchen. It does smell good and she tiptoes a bit (thank god for not-tall men) and places her chin over Coulson’s shoulder to smell more of it.  
Coulson turns his face just a little towards her and smiles. It seems like he doesn’t notice that Daisy is touching him more of late, or he doesn’t mind.

“You like it?” he asks.

“It smells like it needs garlic,” Daisy declares.

Coulson chuckles and Daisy can feel it all over her body, since her chest is pressed to his back right now. It reminds her of when she first got her powers and started feeling the universe vibrate around her, that kind of accuracy of the smallest moments. It’s - well, not to repeat herself, but it’s nice. Somebody else’s body close to her, warm and alive and friendly and safe. Like she has been missing this for years.

“I never put garlic in my sauces,” Coulson tells her.

There’s a little twinkle in his eyes that she doesn’t… oh, okay, she gets it.

“Okay, okay,” she says, backing off, but sliding her arm down Coulson’s back as she leaves his personal space. “Not all of us see every meal as an opportunity for seduction.”

She gets a flash; she once called him “charm school”. It feels so nostalgic, so naive now. They are so much closer these days. And she doesn’t really feel like mocking him for that.

“That’s a shame,” he jokes. “I guess not all of us are as romantic as they should.”

Daisy grins as he watches him go to the fridge and grab a few cloves of garlic. He chops them himself and adds them to the sauce. So casually. She goes back to her work on the rest of the meal - she’s in charge of the very simple side salads - and they spend the next few minutes in silence. But Daisy likes their silences. All her life she has always felt she has to feel the air with words, or it’ll be awkward. In her foster homes, she tried everything: very quiet, or incessantly talkative. In her van she talked to herself because it was so lonely. With Coulson silences were easy and she didn’t feel she had to do either. Just talks as much or as little as she wants.

Then after a while Coulson asks her to taste the sauce again.

She touches him, wraps her hands around Coulson’s hand as he brings th spoon to her mouth.

“Holy shit this is amazing,” she says, and immediately blushes because she doesn’t normally swear.

The kitchen door opens at that time, Elena and Agent Piper storming like couple of hungry teenagers, “Where’s dinner?”. Without thinking (and afterwards not caring that she didn’t think) Daisy locks her arm with Coulson’s presenting a common (entangled) front.

“Hey, hey, this is a Chef Only Zone,” Daisy tells them.

Neither Elena nor Agent Piper seem to be taking much notice of the locked arms, of their bodies pressed close together and moving in synch. Piper laughs at Daisy’s warning.

“You heard the Director,” Coulson says, nodding in the direction of the door.

They leave, but repeating their complains about being still hungry.

Daisy rests her head on Coulson’s arm, her smile against his shirt, for a moment.


	3. soft

Life in SHIELD has never been about softness. That took a bit getting used to. He had been a soft kid, a soft boy, affectionate, physically close with his mother, all hugs and kisses. That had to stop when he joined SHIELD - everything had to be hard and manly and that kind of intimate didn’t exist. There was other kinds of intimacy, of course. Coulson appreciated them too - being holed up in some ditch with your teammate, or the intimacy of sewing someone’s wound closed, aseptic intimacy. But never soft.

“You idiot,” Daisy is saying, but it sounds so _soft_ , and achingly fond.

He remembers where he is, and he remembers what parts of his body hurt. They _all_ hurt but some more than others. Daisy has her hand resting over his arm, over the bed covers but Coulson can feel the warmth and the - yes, again that word - the softness. He remembers how hard he tried not to be that, soft. And the only way was of course to stop being touched, or touching.

“Don’t ever-”

“What? Put my body between you and danger?”

“Yes.”

Her words should sound like a reprimand but they don’t.

He tries opening his eyes completely, maybe curling his lips a bit, just to stop her from worrying so much, crack a joke that would only bring home how alike they are, how painfully alike.

“I didn’t mean to,” he tells her. “I kind of couldn’t help it.”

“You couldn’t-” Daisy shakes her head, like it’s funny, and the words fade and die.

Then she stands up from his chair - pushed so close to the bed that she has been sitting cross-legged, Coulson notices - climbs into bed with him, careful not to hurt him of course, but seemingly sure of what she’s doing. Coulson vaguely thinks he should be surprised, or maybe acknowledge it’s an unusual situation, but then he feels weight of another body besides him and _oh_ he had forgotten how that felt. A body that feels and sounds and smells like Daisy. He moves under the cover to make room before he knows what’s happening.  
“The painkillers will hit any moment,” she tells him. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep.”

Like talking to a kid. But in a good way. In the hard world of SHIELD pain didn’t matter, or if it did it was a badge of honor, Coulson knew people that wore pain like exactly that. Daisy wraps her body around his in an attempt to make the pain go away. She obviously doesn’t agree with that worldview. She probably never did. Coulson remembers the world before SHIELD, the hugs and kisses, being close to such softness, being softness himself. He wishes he could have been so brave and so generous, when it was Daisy the one lying on a bed, hurting, bleeding, dying. That he could have climbed under the covers with her.

“Thank you,” he tells Daisy, welcoming the pressure of her body against his chest.

The noise of the machines becomes soothing all of the sudden, and there’s a funny taste in his mouth he vaguely recognizes from having spent other nights in hospital beds -but always alone- and there’s Daisy’s hand in his, like a shy bird finding a place to rest.

In the morning she is still there, having extended her promise, still carefully tangled with him. Coulson wakes up to that, and the ghost of a dream about softer years, softer rooms, but then he wakes up to Daisy’s sleepy smile, the one she also gives to the nurse as he enters the room and sees them sharing the bed, but Daisy doesn’t move an inch.


	4. recovery (2)

She wouldn’t even think of holding back with him. He’s fresh out of recovery, but she just wouldn’t even consider going easy on him, or pulling her punches even a bit. It’s not just that it would be disrespectful, it’s just that it doesn’t occur to her, because Coulson doesn’t need it. He’s one of the best SHIELD agents she’s ever met - okay, _the best_ , even with his recent injury he’s bound to be more than a match for Daisy on the mats.

He laughs softly under her weight, disagreeing. “My doctor just gave me the okay to train yesterday, let’s take it slow,” he tells her, smiling up at Daisy and she has him pinned to the floor.

Daisy considers that she might have been a bit harsh and worries that Coulson is still hurting from his wounds. But then she remembers exactly how he behaves whenever they spar. Oh she knows his tricks. She tilts her head, renewing her grip on his legs and arms. He’s just trying to get her to lower her defenses.

“Psychological warfare, uh?”

Coulson turns his smile into a smirk and then he uses one of those unexpected moves of his - very unorthodox, not on the SHIELD handbook, she always wonders if Coulson would tell her the story of how he learned them, if she dared ask - to turn the tables on Daisy and in a moment she finds herself on her back, Coulson’s weight on her chest, her wrists immobilized above her head. But Coulson has made the mistake of not paying enough attention to his lower half and it takes a bit of work - Agent Coulson is hard work - and a lot of wrestling for the upper hand but Daisy gets a good knee blow to the side and Coulson lets go enough for her to get her hands free and around his arm.

“Had to try,” Coulson says, his smile now strained by the pain in his elbow as Daisy holds him in place.

His panting echo across the room.

This time something is different. They are alone in the gym. The other agents there have discreetly left - it’s the discreet part that pisses Daisy off. They didn’t leave out of some desire for Daisy and Coulson to have privacy. It was their own awkwardness. And she doesn’t blame them for that but - but it still hurts. It reminds her of coming back to school after one of her foster parents had taken her back to St Agnes, and inevitable every student had their own version of what Daisy had done to deserve rejection _this time_. While it’s completely the opposite, it feels very similar.

Coulson is surprisingly competitive in the gym and right now that makes Daisy feel normal. He gets out of the med bay more or less at the same time Daisy’s new role in SHIELD becomes official. He doesn’t treat her any differently so she doesn’t treat him any differently, just because his stitches are still tender or because now he’s her subordinate. 

In fact, it feels so normal with him she can even joke a bit.

“Admit it, I almost got you there,” he is insisting, as they walk into the common area where most of the team is having breakfast.

Daisy grabs him by the shoulders and squeezes encouragingly.

“Sure, agent, you did well.”

Coulson pouts jokingly, still that glint in his eyes that tells her that their next sparring session is going to be even harder for her. She’s looking forward to it.

They sit on the couch with their coffee and they examine the pastries in front of them. She sits close to Coulson and admits that their recent physical closeness has given her some comfort. It reminds her that change is not always bad.

Koenig puts a clipboard in front of them. “Since you’re so chummy with the Director…”

Daisy and Coulson exchange a look.

“Maybe you can help her on this mission,” Koenig finishes.

Daisy could arch an eyebrow at her sparring partner. She could keep the tone of their exchanges this morning, crack some kind of joke like _“What do you say, Agent Coulson? Feel like getting back on the saddle?”_ , make that last part vaguely flirty. But she doesn’t. Her first instinct here is seriousness. There is a new responsibility here that feels oddly like the old one; because it’s Coulson and because now if something happens to him it’s her call. She wouldn’t want to pressure him to get back in the field, not even with friendly teasing. She touches his knee, naked in his workout clothes, and warm, Daisy’s fingers as lightly as she can, a second moment of pressure as reassurance. Coulson nodding is just as slight, as imperceptible if she wasn’t this close to him on the couch.

Nobody seems to notice the gesture. Koenig is too busy punching their names into the mission preliminary report. Elena seems too busy either mocking her husband’s eating habits or trying to perfect Mack’s pronunciation of the word “pomelo”.


	5. celebration

The diner is pretty crowded, but it’s Daisy’s favorite new place, so it makes sense she brought him here. 

Coulson wonders why this celebratory dinner is between just the two of them, but he also doesn’t wonder.

“I don’t need all this fussing over,” he says as Daisy finds them a free booth. Though it’s like when his mom bought him tons of presents for Christmas - when they were just the two of them, in that cold flat they moved into after leaving Manitowoc - and he complained about all the fussing but he was secretly very pleased. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not fussing,” Daisy says, grabbing the menu like there’s no tomorrow. “A reward for a job well done. I’m a generous boss.”

“Okay, boss.”

It’s not an old-fashioned place but neither a hipster one, it’s a neighbourhood restaurant and Coulson thinks it reminds Daisy of the place she used to frequent when she lived alone in Los Angeles. Comfort places, comfort things, comfort food - they are both the kind of people who would seek these.

“Order whatever you want,” Daisy tells him. “SHIELD’s paying,” she jokes. She only pokes a bit of fun at his fondness for malted shakes.

Coulson watches her re-order the sugar packets and ketchup bottles while they wait for their food. Not for the first time he notices she’s the kind of person who needs to be doing something with her hands - usually typing, of course. Perhaps she has spent so many hours at her laptop over the years that she feels a loss when her hands are free. He catches himself before going on: _You’re profiling her, Phil_ , he tells himself and smiles. He guesses that, in a way, he hasn’t stopped doing that since they first met.

“No, but seriously,” she says between bites of her burger. Coulson looks at his hot dog, which looks great too, but Daisy’s choice looks definitely more the expert’s pick. “Thank you, you were in your best agent behavior today.”

“Am I ever not in my best agent behavior?” he teases her, all puffed up and fake offended.

“Of course, I meant…” she laughs, suddenly. This is the happiest, most relaxed he’s seen her in a while. Coulson wonders what it means, that lately the happiest he’s seen Daisy is when she’s in his company. “Wait, you’ve got-”

She reaches across the booth, catching a ketchup stain on the corner of Coulson’s mouth with her paper napkin. He leans over so she has better access. The diner has been filling up, and Coulson wonders what the other customers might be thinking, catching a glance of Daisy just casually wiping some ketchup of his face. That might have bothered Coulson some time ago - especially when he was in charge, but now he’s only vaguely aware of the possibility that someone might recognize Daisy as Quake, and it turns into a PR problem for her. But in all honesty he doesn’t care much about that either.

“There,” she says, tossing the napkin aside. “What I meant is… you made things easier for me out there, just by being on the field. I still have no idea what I’m doing, it was my first proper big mission as… as-”

“Director.”

She nods.

She still has trouble saying the word. Coulson doesn’t need to look up symptoms for Imposter Syndrome online to know why she’s avoiding the word. You’re profiling again, he thinks.

It wasn’t a particularly tough mission, but it involved a lot of moving parts, he gets what she means about making things easier by being here. It’s touching, for him, this idea that he might have made Daisy’s life a little bit better, the idea that it matters what he does.

“I was just as lost when I first became Director,” he tells her. He hated it, still hates the idea, for all those years he spent wanting to be like Fury, he never actually wanted to be Fury.

“You didn’t seem lost back then,” Daisy comments.

“I have a good poker face,” he says. He’s not so sure that’s true when it comes to Daisy. “And I had been a SHIELD agent for over twenty years, that helped.”

“Right, there’s that,” she says, deflated. “I’m still a rookie. Hacker, conned my way into SHIELD, became an aberration. Good credentials.”

Even her bouts of self-hatred are said in such casual tone that one would be tempted to think Daisy is actually making fun of it all. Coulson puts down his food for a moment and looks her in the eye.

“I think you’ve done much more for SHIELD in the handful of years you’ve been an agent than I did in twenty years,” he says.

Daisy takes a moment to take it in.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true but…” she bites her bottom lip. “It’s really, _really_ nice of you to say it.”

She reaches across the table once more, this time it’s not to wipe his face. She covers Coulson’s hand with hers, shyly, almost reluctantly, despite the increasing physical contact of these past few months. Coulson turns his hand upwards, linking his fingers between hers and squeezing gently, a proper hand-holding grip.

And then they stay like that for a while, hands together over the retro formica table.

It feels oddly innocent - maybe because he’s drinking a milkshake in a diner booth, it’s like holding hands with a girlfriend back in the 1970s, and even by that time the practice was already nostalgic, something out of their parents’ generation. Coulson thinks how he’s older now than any of his parents ever got to be, and yet here he is, holding hands with Daisy.

“I like this,” she says, moving her thumb along the heel of his hand.

She is right. Her hand is warm and the light weight on Coulson’s palm is kind of soothing.

“Yeah. It’s good.”

“But also I want to be able to reach my fries.”

Coulson chuckles. He can see Daisy’s cheeks getting red.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, no, I understand. Fries are important.”

“We can hold hands after I’m finished,” she tells him.

Is that a promise? Coulson wonders.


	6. brave

His eyes are so big and that’s when Daisy thinks, shit, this is actually dangerous, he’s worried.

Except he doesn’t look worried, he looks _terrified_ like she’s never seen him before. And she’s pretty sure they’ve been in worse situations than this, that she’s been in riskier predicaments, so this new fear in his eyes throws her off, it’s not about the situation, it’s about -

It’s about them, it’s about this thing between them, about what’s changed.

Daisy would rather not think about that right now, but Coulson is holding her hands in his, though she can’t exactly feel it under the gauntlets. The new comms van she designed has filled with agents monitoring the situation. One of the junior agents checks her comms and gives her the okay and calls her _Director_ in a way Daisy is alarmingly getting used to, and he does it without batting an eye at the way Agent Coulson is holding onto his superior’s hands.

She can’t feel the touch exactly, but she knows it well enough - she can imagine the real thing, his hand that feel strangely soft despite the skin callused over more than half a life as a SHIELD agent. She knows how usually light the touch, even when he’s holding her tight, like this. She feels brave and ready for a fight, just thinking about the softness of Coulson’s hands.

“I should go with you,” he says.

“Crazy dude with the hostages said to come alone,” Daisy reminds him.

Coulson shakes his head.

“Still…”

“Yeah, I know, you wish you could.”

She smiles, feeling this strange sense that Coulson is the one in need of protection here, not her - it’s not, it’s not _exactly_ a feeling of superiority, because if she’s feeling brave, if she is feeling braver than him, it’s _because of him_.

“It’s fine, it’s not even the first time a bad guy has become creepily obsessed with me,” she says, and normally this is the bit where she’s trying to sound too casual about it and Coulson would frown his brow a little, not saying anything but letting her know that he knows she’s full of bullshit. So she doesn’t do The Casual Tone, she still goes for self-deprecating, but letting it show that god, yes, she’s scared shitless too. “Not the first time they’ve gotten hostages, either.”

She looks away for a moment. The world is colder without Coulson’s big worried eyes in her line of sight. But maybe she deserves a colder world.

“Hey,” Coulson calls, his voice returning the warmth to the world and drawing her glance back to his kind eyes. (She’s been thinking a lot about his eyes lately.) “Those hostages are not your fault.”

Daisy gives him a half-smile.

“No,” she agrees. “But they’re my responsibility.”

“You have to go be Quake,” he says, something in his voice giving her the feeling that Coulson is trying to talk himself into letting her go, into letting go of her hands.

“I have to go be Quake.”

They both nod, willing the other to let go.

“Hey, why don’t you make a plan for tonight?” Daisy gets an idea.

Coulson blinks, standing this close to her she can perfectly see his long eyelashes (she _definitely_ has been thinking about his eyes lately), going down and up again.

“What?”

“So I make sure to wrap this up quickly,” she explains.

“I see,” Coulson says. “I don’t think you’d feel like going out afterwards,” he ponders. Daisy agrees wordlessly. “We could… watch a movie in the common room.”

“Yeah, I like that idea.” She nods. “You pick the movie,” she adds, imagining it already. She’ll take a long shower and do her hair in a braid and they’ll sit on the couch and Coulson will pick something dorky yet classy and it will be slightly awkward as everything between them and it’ll be the best thing ever.

She slips her hands from under his. The look in his eyes tells her that his heart has dropped a bit from the idea of having to see her go already - Daisy almost smiles, no one’s heart had ever dropped for her before.

But she doesn’t leave yet. She lifts her hand to the back of Coulson’s neck and gently pushes him head down, until, leaning forward, she touches their foreheads together.

Coulson doesn’t seem to mind that they are doing this - perhaps the most intimate gesture she’s ever dared with him - in front of about six or seven subordinates. The subordinates themselves barely look at them. Daisy closes her eyes, increasing the intimacy of the moment, and breathes, until her breathing matches Coulson. She doesn’t know, but she thinks he has closed his eyes too.

His forehead is hot and a bit sweaty and it’s weirdly grounding to just stay like this for a moment, like Coulson is giving her this breathing space before she has to go out, this intimate connection that is private (even surrounded by other agents) before she has to become Quake, Protector of the Earth, once more. 

“See you in a bit, okay?” she says without opening her eyes.

He nods softly against her skin. “Of course.”

When she was young she thought of herself as brave. But that was only because she had nothing - no one - to come back to, so the idea of not coming back at all wasn’t so daunting.

Now it is daunting, because she knows bravery is this: walking away from him.


	7. private displays of affection

He catches himself tapping on Daisy’s knee.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she smiles, trying to concentrate on the movie.

It was a good idea, but, as it turns out, she’s pretty exhausted after the mission.

They are sitting on the common area and Coulson’s mind is not entirely registering the fact that anyone could come in and see Daisy with her legs resting over Coulson’s lap, the both of them sharing a bucket of popcorn as if they did this every night. They don’t do this every night. This is the first time Coulson taps his fingers on Daisy’s knee.

Daisy is thinking about how she’s never done this before, with any boyfriend or girlfriend, which should be the usual thing. Not Coulson. It’s especially bizarre to do this with Coulson. Coulson who is wearing jeans and a soft black shirt and it makes Daisy wonder if he even owns pajamas (he does, she remembers, kind of pajamas anyway). Her own sweatpants and oversized sweater more like an improvised thing than anything else. She tries to push through the exhaustion from the mission and focus on the movie - some 80s drama about troubled teens that both she and Coulson like - and she distractedly rubs the bruise of her right cheek.

“Still hurting?” Coulson asks.

“I did try to eat a wall with it,” she points out.

Coulson reaches out and rubs the reddened area softly. The kind of thing he does without thinking these days. The kind of thing he would have _wanted_ to do a while ago but had always stopped himself short of doing. Now wondering why it changed.

“Thank you,” she says. 

“You should probably go to bed,” he tells her.

She’s disappointed a the idea of leaving her current position. 

“I’m comfortable here,” she says, perhaps a little too earnestly. She tries to fix it with a joke: “You’re a good pillow.”

Coulson chuckles. She feels his body vibrate under her thighs.

“I’d hate to find out that now you’re Director I’ve been demoted from Agent to _pillow_ ,” he jokes back.

“You can be Director of Pillows?”

He smiles and goes back to watching the movie. He doesn’t press her to go to her own bed - he knew he had to suggest it, but truth is he’s comfortable too. Tired, like Daisy, lulled by the warmth of the couch, the smell of popcorn, a film that he knows well enough he doesn’t need to pay attention. He seems to inhabit a completely different world from this morning, where he was terrified of letting Daisy go only to never see her again. Those harsh moments seem to belong to different people, not him and Daisy lying on the couch, limbs almost entwined, for anyone to see. It’s hard to imagine the possibility of losing her when they are like this. Perhaps that’s the reason he wants to stay, wants her to stay.

Daisy tries to stay awake, she swears. This is nice, she thinks, as she repositions her body to sink further into the couch - and closer to Coulson’s willing, perfect-pillow, warm body. Moments like this one - and the one they had in the diner, that quiet lunch - seem to have become of special importance to Daisy these days. She doesn’t want to let them slip away just like that, she doesn’t want to take them for granted, she doesn’t want to...

He watches her drift to sleep from the corner of his eye. He waits until he’s sure she’s asleep, until the way her body presses against his arm with each breathing becomes even, relaxed, and he takes the bowl of popcorn from her hands and leaves it on the coffee table. He draws a long breath - Daisy moving on top of him, moving with it - and closes his eyes too, following her.

Daisy is the first one to wake up, and immediately knows that only a couple of hours have passed, that’s it still the middle on the night. The middle of their movie night, she recalls as she feels - her eyes still closed, her consciousness trying to hold on to the rare event of warm and safe sleep - the under her. She can feel a heartbeat close to her cheek and she opens her eyes slowly, wanting to savor the moment.

It’s strange because he opens his eyes and sees her he thinks _Skye_ , though he’s not used that name - even in his own head - in a long, long time. Like a bit of memory has dislodged and Coulson is not sure _when_ they are. She seems to have moved in her sleep, her position dangerous close to find her practically sitting on Coulson’s lap, her head having slipped from being pressed against his shoulder to his chest.

They stay without saying a word, aware the other is awake, and they smile awkwardly, without knowing why, but nodding to the mutual understanding of what’s going on, what’s been going on.

“Sorry, I must have fallen asleep,” Daisy says.

Coulson’s eyelids flutter, she can see that, and it makes her think of small, fragile birds.

“Yeah, me too,” he says.

“I guess I was comfortable.”

“Me too.”

Daisy grabs his shoulder - in a moment where sleep and familiarity makes it hard for her to tell their bodies apart. She draws him closer, her legs sliding over his, feeling the harsh material of his jeans through the thin fabric of her own pants.

Something about the way Daisy is looking at him through sleep stained eyes makes Coulson swallow, makes him prepare himself. She shifts, accommodating her body further to fit the curve of Coulson’s body. He moves his hand across her back, helping her.

She’s so close, she thinks, lifting her head and almost touching her nose to Coulson’s cheek. So close that she has to take a moment before doing what she wants to do.

“I guess… if you don’t want this to progress any further… you’re going to have to get up and leave because I can’t…”

Her voice sounds low and strange and if Coulson didn’t think it was impossible he’d say it was dripping with arousal. “ _Progress any further_ ”, uh? He guesses she means the way her knee is pressing against his groin.

She is giving him an out, but really she is doing it for herself; if she is going to get rejected by Coulson then at least let it be smooth, have him just leave the room, no questions asked.

“Daisy…”

“We’ve been touching each other a lot.”

“We have,” he admits.

“I think we were not supposed to notice…”

“I’ve noticed,” Coulson says. His throat feels painful, like a high school student trying to talk to a crush. “Not too late, I hope…”

She looks at him like she is seizing him up.

Someone has to make the first move - they are so close, so wrapped up with each other’s touch, scent, warmth, that first move feels inconsequential, miniscule. But someone has to make it. Daisy is normally the one to make it, historically that is. She doesn’t remember an occasion she didn’t do it. That’s why it can’t be her this time.

Coulson strengthens his sleepy grip on her hip, giving himself encouragement (maybe just courage) to brush his lips against the corner of Daisy’s mouth, ghost-kiss, 3 a.m. kiss, soft and electric.

She tastes of popcorn and sleep.

He tastes of popcorn and that Coulson-like scent that always ends upon her clothes at the end of the day, from spending so many hours close together. She breathes it in as she kisses him.

Her bottom lip is still swollen from last night’s mission and Coulson takes care, and takes his time. Daisy moves her hand to his, guiding his fingers to her ribcage, sweater rolled up and Coulson catching a moment of bare skin hot enough to make him whimper.

“Wait,” she breathes, gripped by an idea. She maneuvers her body, arches her back.

What are you doing? Coulson wants to ask, missing her mouth, licking his lips just to keep the taste fresh. And then in the darkness he watches as Daisy lowers her pajama bottoms and her underwear down to her knees. Coulson makes a falling sound.

“Touch me,” she asks.

_I’ve been doing that_ , Coulson thinks, feeling a bit guilty in retrospect, wondering if all those innocent friendly touches were that innocent at all. He decides they were, that there’s certain charm in progression, in obliviousness.

Daisy feels his right hand - a bit cold with sleep yet - slowly travelling up from her knee. She’s still shocked that she had the courage to ask, even after that kiss (kisses, whatever, she lost track).

They are in complete darkness except for the low lights of the control panels on the wall behind them, computers still going on, the bright blue coils that give energy to the whole building. Coulson can make Daisy’s profile, but barely so, in that light, her mouth opening as he pushes his fingers inside her and his thumb starts stroking her clit.

His other hand moves behind her, holding her back, her neck. Daisy feels anchored by it, while she selfishly lets herself enjoy Coulson’s fingers. She lets herself not thinking about anything but how good it feels, how it makes so much sense in a strange way. So much it’s surprising she didn’t see it coming - she _swears_ , she had no designs on poor Phil like that. Mmmm, _Phil_ , that sounds good, she tastes the idea, opening her mouth and sucking on Coulson’s tongue as he fingers her, drawing some nice moans out of his mouth, to even the field a bit, considering the shameless noises she’s making as she presses her thighs together around his knuckle, desperate to draw him closer, deeper.

Coulson happy to take care of her, rather than his own arousal, for now; he’s always more comfortable with that and he suspects Daisy has had the kind of partners for whom that’s not a priority. He doesn’t want to think about Lincoln, about how it all ended, but he didn’t seem like the most generous person.

She presses a smile against their kiss, thinking how many more rules she’s breaking here, now that she’s Director. She wonders how many more rules they can break, she takes mental stock of all the places where things like this shouldn’t happen, she wishes she could have her way with Coulson in all of them. The idea - the images of corner around the base, Coulson’s mouth and hands - speeds things up.

He is not ready to watch her come so soon, when it happens, he thinks he should have paid more attention, he wishes the lights were on, he wishes he could start all over again, relive the whole night.

“You okay?” Coulson asks once she’s recovered her breath and once her clothes are not in such disarray and Coulson wonders about that, about traces, about the new warm spot on his upper thigh, he likes the idea in a perverse (or perverted) way, of having some physical proof this is not some wild dream.

“Yeah, yeah,” Daisy wipes her brow with the back of her hand. “Why? Don’t I look okay?”

“You look…” he hesitates. “Mmm…”

He kisses her instead of answering the question. Deep, slow, in a way that makes Daisy’s whole body move with the kiss. Coulson pushes her hair out of the way as he pulls back, his fingers lingering, threaded through her locks, like he’s discovered a favorite new hobby of his.

“Can I…?” She clears her voice, trying for a grandiose jokey tone. “Can I take you to bed, Phil?”

He’s a little startled by her use of his name - she’s done it before, a couple of times through the years, but of course, never like this.

“Yeah, let’s get this show on the road,” he says - he sounds like he didn’t think too much, just saying that uncool thing like it was nothing. He sounded, well, she sounded like Daisy, she thinks.

She chuckles, hiding a smile against the drool-stained collar of Coulson’s black shirt. “Sorry,” she hears Coulson - mmm, Phil - whisper into her ear as he brushes two fingers against the nape of her neck.

She shakes her head. He hopes that didn’t kill the mood. It wouldn’t for him - he likes laughing in bed - and he trusts that for once the ways in which he and Daisy are eerily similar work for their advantage. He stands up first, feeling his legs weak like some sort of bland cliché. Daisy extends her hand, wanting him to help her up. Coulson is happy to do so, wrapping his fingers around hers and pulling, unwilling to stop touching her any time soon.

He keeps her hand wrapped in his as they walk out of the common room and Daisy is glad there are not witnesses this time, this touch, Daisy realizes some gestures are too private.


End file.
